'Net Features : duplicate contenthttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/tags/duplicate+content/default.aspxTags: duplicate contentenCommunityServer 2008 SP2 (Build: 31104.93)Thin and Duplicate Content - A Great Way to Never Rankhttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2014/04/15/thin-and-duplicate-content-a-great-way-to-never-rank.aspxTue, 15 Apr 2014 16:38:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:32907Administrator14http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=32907http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2014/04/15/thin-and-duplicate-content-a-great-way-to-never-rank.aspx#comments<p>Travis Bliffen, <a href="http://www.stellarseo.org/" target="_blank">Stellar SEO</a> ::
</p>
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<p>If you are part of the rapidly growing e-commerce industry, your website and SEO tactics have to be top notch to compete in most niches. Previously overlooked issues with your site&#39;s SEO can no longer be taken lightly and failing to take action now will result in a long and painful road ahead for your website.</p>
<p>Instead of diving into the deep and technical issues, we are going to start with a top-level overview of three simple issues that could be harming your site. We are also going to look at how you (the business owner) can find and fix these issues.</p>
<h2>The Problem: Duplicate Content</h2>
<p>Although certainly not a new issue, duplicate content has become a much more focused upon and potentially harmful problem. After Google&rsquo;s Panda came on the scene, e-commerce companies that had gotten away with using manufacturer product descriptions for their pages for years found themselves all but removed from the SERPs.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>The Culprit: Manufacturer Product Descriptions</h3>
<p>You may have hundreds or thousands of products on your website and thinking about writing a new description for each of them can be terrifying. Unfortunately, if you want to rank well in search, you have to do it.</p>
<h3>Detecting the Problem: A Cheap and Simple Program You Can Use</h3>
<p>If you are not sure whether or not you have duplicate content issues on your page, there are several programs that can make the job much faster and easier, here is one that anyone can use to find issues.</p>
<p><strong>Copyscape-</strong> You can get a couple hundred credits for about $10 on Copyscape. In order to find your duplicate content, just enter the URL of your website and look for exact matches in the results. If you have copy and pasted the descriptions from the manufacturer, you will find it. As you can see below, when I used Amazon and ran a search, it brought up 98 sites that had exact-match content from amazon, meaning the likely copied and pasted from the site.</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/copyscape-screenshot_large.png"><img height="316" width="600" src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/copyscape-screenshot_resized.png" style="vertical-align:middle;border:1px solid black;margin:5px;" alt="" /></a></p>
<h3>Eliminating Duplicate Content:</h3>
<p>If you are not ready to re-write all the descriptions, you should set the duplicate descriptions to No-Index. You won&rsquo;t rank for these pages but you won&rsquo;t get penalized either. If you can only do a few at a time, start with your most valuable products first. Now, on to the next culprit of e-commerce SEO failure, thin content pages.</p>
<p><img height="276" width="400" src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/caseymarkett-twitter.png" style="vertical-align:middle;border:1px solid black;margin:5px;" alt="" /></p>
<p>Almost as prevalent and every bit as harmful, thin content is not something that you want to have on your website. If your site is guilty of this, don&rsquo;t worry because we are going to look at a solution.</p>
<h2>The Problem: Thin Content</h2>
<p>In case you are not sure just want qualifies as thin content, ask yourself the following questions about each page of your website.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">&bull;<span> </span>Does this page provide unique information or insights on a product?</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">&bull;<span> </span>Could this page be combined with other very similar pages?</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">&bull;<span> </span>Do people spend much time on this page when the visit it?</p>
<p>If you are looking for a more defined approach, each page of your website should have 300 or more words of unique content. Yes, it is possible even for product pages.</p>
<h3>The Culprit: Inefficient Site Layouts and a Lack of Product Customer Reviews</h3>
<p>I have found two primary problems when working with any large e-commerce website. The first being pages that are just not needed and the second is a lack of focus on getting product reviews. Let&rsquo;s take a look at how you can find and fix these issues of your site.</p>
<h3>Detecting the Problem: Screaming Frog-SEO Spider</h3>
<p><strong>Screaming Frog</strong> is an SEO tool every bit as handy as a Swiss Army Knife. You can <a target="_blank" href="http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/">download Screaming Frog</a>&nbsp;free and use it to diagnose numerous issues with your website, including thin content pages.</p>
<p>To find pages with less than 300 words of content, simply enter the URL of your website into Screaming Frog and let it scan your page. On the screenshot below I have highlighted the three steps to find thin content.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">1.<span> </span>Enter URL to Spider</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">2.<span> </span>Click on the Internal Tab</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">3.<span> </span>Scroll over until you see word count&nbsp;</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/ScreamingFrog-screenshot_large.png"><img height="151" width="600" src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/ScreamingFrog-screenshot_resized.png" style="vertical-align:middle;border:1px solid black;margin:5px;" alt="" /></a>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Now all you have to do is sort the pages by word count and make a list of pages with thin content.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Eliminating Thin Content Pages</h3>
<p>You should now have a list of pages on your site that need more content. Here are the most common means of fixing your issue.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;"><strong>1.<span> </span>Remove the Page Completely -</strong> if the pages are no longer useful, do not get any traffic, or do not provide information about a product people are looking for, save yourself the hassle and just get rid of it so you can focus on more profitable pages.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;"><strong>2.<span> </span>Merge The Page with Similar Pages</strong> - several products come in a variety of sizes, colors and with various other options. If you sell products the fit this criteria, you should create a single page in which the buyer can select from all of the options. Many e-commerce sites make the mistake of having one page for a blue vase and another page for the same vase in red. If you have that type of setup, consult with an e-commerce website designer and update your site layout.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;"><strong>3.<span> </span>Add Content to the Page Yourself </strong>- although many people argue that there is not 300-plus words worth of useful information you can give about a product, I have to disagree. Here is one example taken from Amazon.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/amazon-american-horror-story_large.png"><img height="200" width="600" src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/amazon-american-horror-story_resized.png" style="border:1px solid black;margin:5px;" alt="" /></a></p>
<p>If we run this page (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Horror-Story-Season-1/dp/B005LAJ1O0">http://www.amazon.com/American-Horror-Story-Season-1/dp/B005LAJ1O0</a>) through Screaming Frog, you will see that it contains 633 words. While your page may be smaller, you should take a note from their page layout and be sure to include as much detailed information as possible about whatever you are selling. This could include:</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">&bull;<span> </span>How It&rsquo;s Made</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">&bull;<span> </span>What It Can Be Used For</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">&bull;<span> </span>Warranty and Exchange Information</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">&bull;<span> </span>Common Questions About It</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">&bull;<span> </span>Detailed Technical Specs</p>
<p>If you just cannot come up with useful content yourself, you may appreciate the next method.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;"><strong>4.<span> </span>Get Customer Product Reviews</strong> - Amazon does a great job of this and the majority of the 633 words on the page mentioned above come from customer reviews. You should make every attempt to get reviews from your customers and make them part of the product page. If you are finding it hard to get reviews, you can offer incentives such as free shipping in return for honest feedback.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;"><strong>5.<span> </span>Use a Combination of 1-4</strong> - in a perfect world, your website would have just one problem with a single solution. In reality you may find that each of your pages needs one of more of the above actions to improve it. Be tough when evaluating your pages because Google is certainly going to be.</p>
<h2>The Problem: Duplicate Page Title Tags</h2>
<p>Duplicate titles happen all the time, especially in large sites with a lot of product pages. Almost every e-commerce site is bound to have a few duplicate titles that need to be addressed.</p>
<h3>The Culprit: Auto Generated and Template-Based Titles</h3>
<p>Many e-commerce platforms use templates to create page titles. This is a quick way to get a ton of duplicate page titles. As a matter of fact, I ran across a car dealership site which had the same title for nearly all of their 5,000-plus pages.</p>
<h3>Detecting the Problem: Screaming Frog SEO Spider</h3>
<p>I told you this tool has a ton of uses and here is just one more. Enter the URL of your site as in the step above and let it scan your site. Once it finishes, click on the page titles tab and sort by occurrences as I have below. If the occurrences box shows more than one, you have found a duplicate title.</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/seospider-screenshot_large.png"><img height="114" width="600" src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/seospider.png" style="vertical-align:middle;border:1px solid black;margin:5px;" alt="" /></a></p>
<h3>Getting Rid of Duplicate Titles</h3>
<p>The size of your site is going to determine how you should approach this task. Here are some options for eliminating duplicate titles.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">1.<span> </span>Manually review and update the title for each page of your site.&nbsp;</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">2.<span> </span>Delete pages that offer little or no value to the site.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">3.<span> </span>301 Redirect the other pages to the primary page with that title.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">4.<span> </span>If the issue is with your home page or a WWW versus non WWW version of a page, set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">5.<span> </span>Merge similar pages into a single page. Just like above, you can look for pages that have thin content and duplicate titles to make a list of pages to merge.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">6.<span> </span>If using a CMS like WordPress, updating your permalinks to a custom structure can resolve several issues. If you are not familiar with permalinks, anyone knowledgeable in WP should be able to help you out pretty quickly. If you want to tackle this on your own, here is a guide from <a target="_blank" href="https://yoast.com/articles/duplicate-content/">Joost de Valk</a>, the creator of the Yoast Plugin that should help you better understand duplicate content in WordPress.</p>
<p style="padding-left:30px;">7.<span> </span>Have your own platform built. The site I mentioned earlier selling cars has a custom CMS built for them that could create unique titles based upon the details of the product listed. This is costly but worthwhile for a huge site.</p>
<p>As you can see, there are several ways to remove duplicate and thin content from your e-commerce site. Using tools like Copyscape and Screaming Frog can make the task a lot easier but you have to be willing to spend the time or money to fix these issues correctly if you want to rank in 2014 and beyond.</p>
<p>I sincerely hope you have learned a thing or two here today and if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them below.</p>
<hr />
<p><img height="75" width="75" src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/travis-bliffen.png" style="float:left;margin:5px;" alt="" />Author Bio: <a href="https://plus.google.com/+TravisBliffen/posts" target="_blank">Travis Bliffen</a> is the founder of <a href="http://www.stellarseo.org/" target="_blank">Stellar SEO</a>, a search marketing and design agency located near St. Louis Mo. Travis loves researching and writing about SEO strategies and implementing innovative strategies for his clients. Connect on <a href="https://twitter.com/THESEOPROZ" target="_blank">Twitter @theseoproz</a>.</p>
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<div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=32907" width="1" height="1">search marketingwordpressduplicate contente-commerce seoproduct pageswmfeatureTravis BliffenStellar SEOproduct descriptionsSEO for merchantsthin contentScreaming Frog SEO SpiderCopyscapeseo for internet retailers8 Ways to Improve Your Site Over the Weekendhttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2012/07/20/weekend-warrior-10-ways-to-improve-your-site-in-48-hours.aspxFri, 20 Jul 2012 14:00:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:20273Michael Garrity5http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=20273http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2012/07/20/weekend-warrior-10-ways-to-improve-your-site-in-48-hours.aspx#comments<hr />
<p><strong>Everybody may be
working for the weekend, but if you run a website, you already know that you&rsquo;re
almost always working <i>on</i> the weekend,
as well.</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In fact, most of the work of the everyday Web professional
has to do with tweaking, analyzing, and generally optimizing the performance of
their site(s), which can take up a lot of time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>So, if you don&#39;t want to spend your whole weekend working, here are eight
quick ways to refine your website in two days, and still have
time to go see the new Batman movie.</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<h4><strong>Offer social proof on your website.</strong></h4>
<p>While peer
pressure is typically seen as negative, that is not the case in the marketing
world. Web workers can display customer testimonials or case studies on their
website to increase engagement and conversions. By doing this, your
audience will be able to relate to other customers, and therefore learn how
effective your services or products are from a trusted opinion. So, find some of the nicest things that consumers out there have said about you (and don&#39;t forget, you can encourage them) and share it with the world.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<h4><strong>Test email subject lines.</strong></h4>
<p>Email marketing campaigns
won&rsquo;t be successful if emails aren&rsquo;t delivered or opened, which is why it is
always important to use best practices, such as testing, when creating email
subject lines. One way that marketers can <a href="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2012/05/10/test-subject-lines-with-new-tool.aspx" target="_blank">quickly test</a> email subject lines is
with <a href="http://subjectline.com/" target="_blank">subjectline.com</a>. This free subject line scoring tool evaluates subject
lines and provides users with scores, as well as deliverability and marketing
tips and advice. Take some time - 15 minutes or so - to sit down and brainstorm great subject lines.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<h4><strong>Generate a
<a target="_blank" href="http://fivesecondtest.com/">Fivesecondtest</a> for your site to assess its usability/readability.</strong></h4>
<p>When you
don&rsquo;t have the time to conduct user tests, this handy Web-based
tool lets Web workers upload a screenshot of their Web page and then creates
two different five-second user tests, one for memory and one for descriptive
feedback. And, you know, it only takes five seconds.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<h4><strong>Insert dynamic meta
descriptions into your HTML.</strong></h4>
<p>One of the easiest ways to improve your search
marketing efforts is to include useful, compelling meta descriptions on your
Web pages. Just be sure that they are relevant to the page&rsquo;s content and are
captivating enough inspire a user to click on the search result.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<h4><strong>Monitor keywords on Twitter.</strong></h4>
<p>It is important to keep
an eye on discussions that are relevant to your brand, because it can help
social media managers better connect with their audience, as well as help publishers
discover possible content ideas. While there are many tools that can be
leveraged for monitoring social media mentions, two free Twitter-specific tools
worth checking out are <a href="http://monitter.com/" target="_blank">Monitter</a> and <a href="http://twitterfall.com/" target="_blank">Twitterfall</a>. Take a few minutes every hour or so to see who is using your keywords in the Twitterverse.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<h4><strong>Assess your forms.</strong></h4>
<p>Does your email subscription form
ask for unnecessary information? If the answer is &quot;yes,&quot; you may be scaring off
potential subscribers. This is why removing unnecessary or less important
information from your forms can prove to be beneficial in the long run. In
fact, it is important to note that the only information really needed on a
newsletter subscription form is a name and email address, especially because
more targeted information can always be obtained at a later time. Should you have some time to spare, why not give one (or all?) of your forms a review to make sure they&#39;re not asking superfluous questions.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<h4><strong>Fix up and customize
your 404 page.</strong></h4>
<p>Obviously you never want your visitors to land on one of
these, but it happens, and in those situations, it&rsquo;s good to have a custom 404
page that will not only provide them with information, but also offers additional useful content and encourages them to continue exploring your
awesome website. If your 404 page is uninformative and boring, why not take a few hours to create one that will be a little more meaningful to your site&#39;s visitors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<h4><strong>Adjust white space to
improve readability.</strong></h4>
<p> Finding the right balance between too much and too
little space around text is one of the essential aspects of a readable website.
Remember that your chunks of text content need room to breathe so that your
visitors can view them more easily, and they shouldn&rsquo;t be adhered to other elements,
particularly images. Spend a few minutes during your morning coffee looking over your website to make sure it&#39;s optimized for readability, and if you see any problems, try increasing your padding and margins.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong></p>
<div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=20273" width="1" height="1">seokeywordsemailsemdesignsocial media404twitterduplicate contentformsretargetingweekend warriorsmeta descriptionsreadabilitysubject linesubject line testing toolwmfeaturewhite spaceDuplicate Content: No Such Thing http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2008/09/16/duplicate-content-no-such-thing.aspxTue, 16 Sep 2008 16:30:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:6185Pete Prestipino2http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=6185http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2008/09/16/duplicate-content-no-such-thing.aspx#comments<p>Google did its best to clear up any confusion recently about duplicate content penalties - saying in short that they don&#39;t really exist (unless being black hat is your <i>modus operandi</i>). It should come as no surprise to most SEOs that many online destinations have multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content. How do you resolve these duplicate issues if they exist on your site? <br /><br />Having duplicate content on your site can potentially affect your site&#39;s performance and ranking, but it doesn&#39;t neccessarily cause penalties. Let&rsquo;s dig a little deeper to get a better understanding. Say for example that you notice www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&amp;brand=riedell and www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&amp;color=black feature the exact same content, are on your site and within the Google SERPs. Penalty for you? Not exactly. Here&rsquo;s why.<br /><br />According to Google, duplicate content on a site is &ldquo;not grounds for action (penalties) on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s a very clear statement. Since most SEOs are of the white hat variety, Google has made their position on duplicate content clear and outlined some best practices to clear up any issues. <br /><br />Non-malicious duplication is quite common as many CMSs don&#39;t handle URL construction and organization very well by default. When Google identifies duplicate content, it is because variations appear in URL parameters (as provided in the example above.) When duplicate content happens, the URLs in question are grouped into a &ldquo;cluster.&rdquo; From there, Google selects the one URL that best represents the cluster from that group, and then consolidates properties of the URLs in the cluster (such as link popularity) to the representative URL. <br /><br />Google&rsquo;s advice? Use sitemaps. If you want to tell Google which URL should appear in the SERPs, simply make the necessary modifications by including that preferred URL in your general sitemap. Should Google be unable to consolidate all of the duplicate pages, page strength might be diluted and your ranking may sink.</p>
<p></p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=6185" width="1" height="1">Search Engine Optimizationseoduplicate contentDuplicate Content, Images Used for Text, and Valid Markuphttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2007/11/08/Duplicate-Content-Images-for-Text-Valid-Markup.aspxThu, 08 Nov 2007 19:27:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:3564John Fitzsimmons0http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=3564http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2007/11/08/Duplicate-Content-Images-for-Text-Valid-Markup.aspx#commentsWelcome to part five of our Web Design SEO Checklist. Today we are covering Duplicate Content, Images Used for Text, and Valid Markup.
Because in the past spammers have developed “fake sites” loaded with similar or stolen content life has become more difficult....(<a href="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2007/11/08/Duplicate-Content-Images-for-Text-Valid-Markup.aspx">read more</a>)<img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=3564" width="1" height="1">imagesduplicate contentvalid markupWordPress: Duplicate Content Pluginhttp://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2007/05/29/wordpress-duplicate-content-plugin-for-wordpress.aspxTue, 29 May 2007 16:16:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:2285Pete Prestipino0http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=2285http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2007/05/29/wordpress-duplicate-content-plugin-for-wordpress.aspx#comments<hr />
<p><br /><b>I run a few weblogs in my spare time that are powered by WordPress so I am constantly on the lookout for those tools which will make blogging better; meaning added efficiency and more value for the readers that visit. </b><br /><br />I&#39;ve successfully tried out hundreds of plugins over the years and discovered that many of those I like most offer long term value for me personally or end-users. Now, I look for those that provide functionality that will improve SEO or visitor usability efforts and stay away from those that offer &quot;blog bling&quot; alone. <br /><br />I came aross an interesting plugin today called the &quot;<a href="http://www.myukm.com/myblog/duplicate-content-plugin-wordpress/">Duplicate Content Plugin</a>&quot; which prevents search engines from indexing Wordpress pages that contain duplicate content (like archives and category pages). The plugin essentially adds the &quot;noindex&quot; tag to category pages - one of the biggest causes of duplicate content on Wordpress blogs. <br /><br />While it&#39;s no substitute for a solid robots.txt file, it&#39;s easy to use and will eliminate many problems.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=2285" width="1" height="1">wordpressduplicate content